After emerging from the showdown over the Republican-led government shutdown relatively unscathed, the Obama administration finds itself under assault on three fronts: problems surrounding Obamacare, revelations of the U.S. spying on allies, and the 2012 attack on the U.S diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya — over which a senator has threatened to hold up all of the administration’s nominations.

The controversies are sure to fuel continued Republican attacks on Obama and his Democratic allies as the nation gears up for midterm elections next year, and the White House has portrayed the attacks as so much partisan chatter.

But to CNN senior political analyst David Gergen, they reflect the relative inexperience of the Obama White House.

“This is an administration that has been very, very good at its politics, but has never been very good at execution of policies from Day One,” he said Monday.

“It’s an administration which has some really smart people in it, and a lot of younger people. It doesn’t have very many heavyweights,” he said.

This isn’t news here and was certainly predicted during the first election cycle that Mr. Obama survived. And, I have to admit, now that he’s President, the fact that he is largely ineffectual may be my most favorite thing about him.

But this ACA rollout is a disaster. A disaster the likes of which would get an executive in the private secotr fired.

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Last month I posted about Media Bias as it pertained to the coverage in the Wisconsin Labor dispute between the public sector unions and Governor Walker. In it, I decried that while Gallup DID, in fact, report on their poll that showed strong support for the limitation of State workers. However, Gallup hid that report so deep and under such misguided headlines that it would never be found.

The top 3 most popular choices in dealing with state budgets? Reducing the power and influence of the state worker. Specifically, reducing the ability of the state unions to collectively bargain.

Recent headlines made me stop as I saw yet another case of media bias.

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Each side accuses the other of media bias. Fox gets hammered by the Left and everyone else gets hammered by the Right.

But what is it exactly, that the media does that creates this impression of bias? What is it that strikes someone as “unfair” and “unbalanced”?

For me, it’s not the truth of the story, it’s the profile of the stories themselves. Rachel Maddow, for example, doesn’t lie, she just doesn’t run disparaging stories against Democrats. Hannity same but reversed.

So, here is my example of bias in the media. A bias in an organization that I think TRIES not to be bias.

I’m not sure what it means; I wanna stay away from the very thing I suspect it is.

I was reading though Renaissance Guy this morning when he brought up the very thing I’ve been rattling around:

…in the Fort Hood shooting there was a Muslim man who clearly considered himself part of the massive struggle that radical Muslims call jihad. In that case, however, the media darlings tried and tried to avoid reporting it.

…

in the Tucson shooting there allegedly and apparently is a lone man, deeply disturbed and incoherent, with no clearly dilineated political persuasion and no definite motive. It’s a bit too soon to tell for certain, but it appears that they [the media] were dead wrong again…

But they dispute the commonly held assumption that the spending causes the win. Instead they point out that anticipated win – or possible win – will often attract the campaign money. When candidates obtain large amounts of money it is usually because they are seen to be the best candidate or the one mostly likely to win. Based on Levitt’s study of campaign spending by the same candidates against the same competitors over decades of US congressional elections, it was found that ‘the amount of money spent by the candidates hardly matters at all. A winning candidate can cut his spending in half and lose only 1% of the vote. Meanwhile, a losing candidate who doubles his spending can expect to shift the vote in his favor by only that same 1%’. The Freakonomics authors conclude that campaign spending has a very small impact on election outcomes, regardless of who does the spending.